What Do You Want to Do On Set?

Filmmaking isn't only about directing or operating the camera. Crew, and all their various talents, fit into an incredibly complex filmmaking machine designed to grind hours into footage. So the question is: where do you fit within that machine? And what do you want to do on set?

It’s true the director sits pretty as king of the mountain (though a producer might try to knock them off once in a while), but there is such diversity among the talented people who make up a film crew that to lump them all together into one identical group is misleading.

So, what do you want to do on set?

If you want to tinker like you used to as a kid with legos, go be a grip.

If you don’t know what you want, then pick anything on this list and start there. Become a production assistant, a driver, whatever you can get hired as. There’s so many nooks and crannies in the film industry that you may not have found your niche yet.

In some cases, you might wrap on a shoot and discover you hate the long hours, the spontaneity, and the grueling workload of film production. That’s OK – it’s definitely not for everyone.

In that case, if you want a normal Saturday & Sunday weekend, a steady paycheck, predictable hours, easy tax filings, and all the perks that come with joining the 9-5 workforce while still being a part of the industry, pick a job off the set. There’s marketers and sales people and web developers and agents and an entire ecosystem of more traditional jobs built around the film industry that don’t have the same pitfalls as being in production (though, like any job, they have their own drawbacks).

You don’t have to be behind the camera on set or in the director’s chair to be a part of the industry.

You do, however, have to know what you want. So, what’s it going to be?